


Along the Usual Road

by voleuse



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-24
Updated: 2009-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>These two would know the way home like the palms of their hands</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along the Usual Road

**Author's Note:**

> Set during S1. Title and summary adapted from Susan Donnelly's _The Sevres Road_.

There were days when Tosh couldn't stand being in the office anymore. Days when Jack was too flippant, Gwen was too sweet, and Owen was too...Owen. If she could escape, she ran topside to the office and found Ianto pretending to be a travel agent. Sometimes there was even a customer.

Those were her favorite sorts of days because Ianto did everything by the book, and nobody looking for a spur of the moment romantic getaway wanted the facts and figures of currency exchange and crime rates in Jamaica versus Bali.

On her favorite sorts of days, Tosh leaned against the filing cabinet that used three manila folders to disguise the bazooka Jack would never admit to wanting to use. She smiled pleasant as can be whenever the customer would look at her, and she nodded whenever Ianto's sentence ended with a note of query.

Tosh knew nothing about tourism or travel, but when she looked in the customer's eyes, she recognized somebody who wanted to run away.

*

 

"How do you do it?" Tosh wondered aloud. "Did you take a seminar or something?"

Ianto noted something on a clipboard, then hung up the phone. "A seminar in what?"

"In, you know--" she gestured at the fan of brochures on his desk, the half-filled application forms, and the check for a sum large enough to make her reconsider her career path. "Travel."

Ianto did that thing, that three second pause in which he either tempered his answer or made it up entirely. "I'm thankful Jack didn't make us a tea shop, truth be told."

"I'd be rubbish with customers," Tosh offered.

"Probably." Ianto grinned, and she let it go as a joke.

*

 

She'd meant to take a day off, proper, after the latest close encounter, when even Jack started looking at her like she was fragile instead of herself. She lasted until half past nine, and then she took a walk and found herself in front of the travel agency.

When the door swung open, she counted to seventeen before Ianto appeared, shuffling folders as if he'd been working with another client over the telephone.

Tosh set her handbag on the desk and settled on the cracked vinyl of the chair opposite. "I am in desperate need of a vacation," she announced.

Ianto's lips quirked, just for a moment, and then he settled into business mode again. "What sort of getaway would you prefer?"

"The most ridiculously expensive one you can recommend," she said, after a minute of deliberation. "With sunshine. And nudity."

Ianto shuffled through the ever-present brochures. "Do you have a preference? There's a package tour in the South Pacific that's very popular."

"What do you think?" Tosh asked, leaning forward.

Ianto paused. "What do you mean?"

She selected a brochure, thinking ace and queen of spades. "You _are_ coming with me, after all."

"Of course," Ianto replied. "In that case, let me recommend the Caribbean."


End file.
